


Push

by amuse



Series: Sounds Like Hallelujah [5]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Series of ficlets, holiday fluff and angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:53:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amuse/pseuds/amuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He forgets sometimes how young she still is and he’s never wanted any of these things to push inside of her the way they push inside of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push

Geno’s less careful about the way he touches, and Sidney often looks for it. It feels like it happened quickly - from the day he shied away from it all to the day he pulled Geno’s hand into his and held onto it because he wanted the warmth. He’s gotten better about managing the guilt and Geno never lets him forget that the universe needs him, that he’s here and he presents some kind of balance. 

So it had felt like the most natural thing in the world to pull Geno aside and ask him to go to Cole Harbour. It’s taken him four years to make the decision to go back, but he can’t do it alone. Or more aptly, he just can’t do it without Geno. There had been some hesitation on Geno’s part, but it settled into a yes that was accompanied by a large hand against Sidney’s neck. The embrace that had followed was all Sidney, with gripping hands and a nose pushed into Geno’s shoulder.

It’s harder than Sidney had expected. Everything’s changed save for the house in which he’d grown up. He hasn’t been able to come back to it. He hasn’t been able to sell it. It’s just been here, the life that had surrounded it buried with his parents. His neighbors look after it. Every year Sidney hires someone to winterize and summer-ize and every other ize that comes with owning a house. It’s been cleaned regularly but the smell is the kind of unfamiliar and sanitary that makes Sidney feel sick the minute he steps into it. Geno puts a hand on his shoulder and Taylor moves further inside slowly, her eyes raking over every bit of it. They stop at the photographs still over the mantle. Their mother and father, Sidney holding Taylor and smiling so brightly. So many of Sidney and hockey. 

She turns to Sidney and there are tears in her eyes. “Do you remember that one?” She flicks her hand to the one of them and Sidney nods. 

“Yeah, I do,” he whispers and feels Geno’s hands nudge him inside. There’s an unthinking moment where he reaches behind him and grasps Geno’s hand. Geno gives him a squeeze, and Sidney releases him in favor of moving towards his memories. Sidney lifts one of his mother and father leaning against a motorcycle and shows it to both Geno and Taylor. “I used to tease her, that she liked Dad because he was a hellraiser. She’d give it right back to me, that he was a regular Wild Bunch Marlon Brando. I had no idea what that meant but it made dad laugh so hard.” 

He replaces that photograph and picks up the one of Taylor and him. “I was always holding you. At first Mom would get real nervous, but Dad kept telling her I had the surest hands in Canada. He never worried that I’d drop you or anything. He just let me hold you and love you and I didn’t think I could love anything the way I loved hockey but then there you were.” 

He forgets sometimes how young she still is and he’s never wanted any of these things to push inside of her the way they push inside of him. Geno tells him that he should, that they should carry the memories of their family together. He tells Sidney that it is part of what binds them but it’s all pain for Sidney, and he just wants to protect her from it. When he sees her eyes glazed over and tears slip from the corners, he feels it even stronger.

Until she says, “You never talk about them. I try to remember more but I feel like there’s just so much I can’t.”

“They loved us so much,” Sidney whispers and he wants to fight the way grief threatens to rise past the stopper he’s always put on it. 

“I know they did,” she says and when she embraces him, he notices that Geno’s stepped out of the room. “I know and now we just love each other.”

He doesn’t think it’s that simple, not anymore, and he wants to think that’s as it should be.

Taylor asks if they can have Christmas like they did before their parents died. She asks over lunch that Geno had taken his time finding in a town unfamiliar to him. Sidney catches Geno’s eyes when the words settle in the center of the table between them all and he wants to say no. He’s got it on the tip of his tongue before Geno speaks up.   
“Is good idea, Sid. We chop tree. Find parents’ Christmas thing. Make Christmas here.”

It’s almost like last year, all last minute and seemingly crazy, but he caves because Taylor is hopeful and maybe Geno is too. They both smile so wide when they see the first hints of his affirmative and it still hurts to see. He isn’t sure when that will stop but he knows he’s got to give. 

And he does, so they haul all of his mom’s Christmas boxes from the attic and stack them in the living room. They go to the farm where it’s Sidney’s job to use the ax to take the tree down since he’d done it before with his dad. He’s not as awful at it as he was then, if only because he’s stronger, and nothing beats the smell of it once they’ve got it in the house and in his parents’ old tree stand. Geno’s got aspirin before Sidney has to ask for it, and it’s the littlest thing that makes his heart swell and his lips turn up. Geno helps go through the boxes and few of the lights still work, so he makes a last minute run to the store with Taylor, carrying a list that also, apparently, includes dinner fixings. Geno and Taylor are determined to do it all and Sidney wonders when in the last year he allowed them to become a tag-team combination when he can hardly say no to either of them individually and actually mean it.

There are shuddery breaths when the tree is finished and he’s flashing back to all of the Christmases he’d spent in this room where music was their laughter. He can see his first Canadiens cap, Taylor’s first hockey stick. He can see his mother giving his father the watch he wore until the day he died. He can see the tears in his mother’s eyes when his father gave her a delicately wired silver frame with a photograph of her, sitting in the big window with young Sidney curled up against her side, and her hand covering the rounded curve of her belly where Taylor kicked relentlessly for months. There’s a smile amidst the tears because he thinks about how they should have known then that she’d be goalie. 

Taylor holds his hand and when he looks at her, the lights are flashing colorful shadows on her face. She squeezes his hand and he can see the woman she’s bound to become. She’s so strong already and it scares him to think that she won’t be like this forever. He won’t be able to fuck everything up and still find ways to protect her once she makes her way into the world.

She puts her gifts under the tree and sticks around for a group of carolers that knock on their door. It’s not something they have in Pittsburgh so she’s a little taken with them. Geno hums along and there’s a moment Sidney thinks he could be lulled into every bit of safety he’s looked for since he was eighteen. Geno’s arm circles his shoulders right there at the door and once it’s closed, Taylor lights up again. It fights through her exhaustion but she’s not stopping. 

“There’s one more thing we bought,” she says, and Geno looks confused because well, he bought everything, and there’d been nothing else they pulled from the bags. 

Taylor, though, she’s practically shaking as she digs into her own backpack. “Well Geno didn’t buy it. I did. When he was off getting the turkey. I just remember we had it when I was a kid. Every Christmas. I’m sure we always had it.” She’s stuttering a little and that’s something she never does. She hands Sidney a small bag but stops him from looking inside. “Just wait. Until I go to my room. Then you both open it. It’s for you two.”

Geno looks even more confused, which is pretty much how Sidney feels. He agrees, though, and they catch the end of _It’s a Wonderful Life_ before she she’s sleeping against Sidney’s side. It’s Geno that carries her upstairs and gets her into bed. They both take off her socks and cover her up, and Sidney kisses her head. Geno shuts the door behind them and they walk downstairs together and stare at their present from his sister.

“What you think?” Geno asks, picking up the bag and handing it to Sidney. It’s so light that he can’t begin to imagine what it could be. 

“Well there’s only one way to find out.” He unfolds the top of the bag and pushes his hand inside. He withdraws a red, green, and white box and inside, there’s... “Oh,” he mumbles and very pointedly doesn’t look at Geno.

Usually Geno speaks very fluent Sidney, but this is different. Really different. “What ‘oh’ mean? Sid?”

Sidney turns the box over in his hand and he’s red from his neck to ears. “It’s mistletoe. I think. I’m sorry, Geno. She’s. I think she thinks,” he’s stuttering now and when he finally does helplessly look, Geno’s smiling.

“Where your mom put?”

“What?” he starts, but then forces some semblance of getting it together. “Over there, in the doorway to the kitchen,” Sidney points behind them and Geno takes Sidney’s hand. 

“Come, Sidney. We hang.” Geno’s ordering Sidney to accompany him and well, Sidney can’t say no to Geno, so he goes. They rifle through the kitchen drawers for a thumbtack and Sidney opens the box. He fumbles with the plant as he pushes it towards Geno.

“You’re taller. You do it. Right in the middle so it hangs.”

Geno’s so steady when he does it and Sidney’s still flushed and warm. The lights are blinking and he can hear carols in his head. It feels more like Christmas than it ever has, especially when they both stare up at the mistletoe. He can see his father’s hands on his mother’s waist in those moments. He can hear her laughing and see how her face colored in much the same way Sidney’s does now. He allows himself to feel how much they loved each other in the way Geno’s hand sets itself on his waist.

“Sister smart,” he murmurs. 

Sidney knows it but it’s lights out for him. Geno kisses him and it’s soft and sincere and every floodgate seems to open in the way it makes Sidney shake. He grasps at Geno’s shirt and holds on in a way he really didn’t think he knew how anymore. Geno is safe, and Geno’s been everything for these years. Sidney’s just never given himself the chance to see and accept it. It seems Geno's just waited until Sidney could.


End file.
